Sara Lauzon has driven by Heartwood countless times, but a buried secret about the property has her looking a bit more closely.

Lauzon is a third-year history student at the University of Ottawa who jumps out of the shower or bolts from bed at night to jot down ideas for where to search for clues into the secret history of Cornwall and she has a new research project on the go.

Fresh off the success of her first solo-research project — getting Judge James Redmond O’Reilly recognized at the courthouse — Lauzon wants more overlooked Cornwall residents recognized.

The building that makes up Heartwood has changed over the years, serving as St. Michael’s Academy for Girls before becoming a retirement home. Before that, it was the House of Refuge, built in 1913.

The House of Refuge was a precursor to Glen-Stor-Dun Lodge, and housed the aged, sick and unemployed.

Lauzon affectionately calls them “Cornwall’s misfits,” as their House of Refuge intake forms list “feeble-minded” and “unemployed.” as their reason for coming to the House of Refuge.

Often, the inmates of the home would pass away while living there. Some, without family or money, were buried on the property.

“Not only did they not have gravestones or tomb markers,” said Lauzon, “but they were stuffed in coffins.”

Exhumed

Some were exhumed when an addition was added at the academy for girls in the 1950s, and more when Heartwood expanded in the mid-1990s, said Lauzon. She isn’t sure what happened to those who were moved, but is sure there are more buried under the Eleventh Street property.

“They were basically shunned,” said Lauzon of those buried on the property.

Armed with an old registry of people who lived at the House of Refuge — found in an archive in Morrisburg — Lauzon is slowly researching each person.

“If you were buried, you deserve a marker,” she says.

And that’s why she wants to place a plaque on the property with a list of people who were buried there.

And perhaps a nice live tree, she suggests.

If you know someone who was buried at the House of Refuge, Lauzon is seeking your help for her research.